Mud Covered Love
by Rising Ren
Summary: Following Vicious into death after their final duel, Spike takes a moment afterwards to reflect on the truths of his past with Julia and his affection for Faye. SF but NOT anti-Julia
1. 2012 Revised Version kinda lol

**Authors Note 2012:** I originally wrote this (as you can see the publishing date) back in 2004.. I was 17? lol. I recently got a notification that someone else had "favorited" this story, and it was just a flashback that I had to go re-read it.. and I was embarrassed. Such huge, long, run on sentences! I decided to repair what I could without changing it. So while it's still not great, it's still what it originally was meant to be - so I'm happy.  
**Authors Note 2004:** I watched the 26th (and last) episode of Cowboy Bebop before writing this; just to be sure that the events were correct and that it could viably be interpreted this way. I was finding it sort of odd that Spike didn't say much to Julia, and how he never confirmed 'running away' with her, or even making motions towards her that they would be together.. even when Annie made a comment about being 'happy' for them. It almost felt like he was avoiding telling her something other than that so as to give her peace in her last moments. Besides who needs details when one is dying? Anyway, I am a Faye/Spike shipper, but I'm not a cruel person who can't admit that Julia and Spike once had something. It was in my opinion that he was a bit cold to Julia when he met up with her, and that is explained a bit in this one-shot. Remember, that's just my opinion, so please be respectful, and if you happen to enjoy it, drop a review. Also, as always - I am in no way affiliated with Cowboy Bebop other than just being an avid supporter & fan. :)

* * *

He looked down at the body of himself; lying prone on the red staircase with a sense of calm and regret. He hadn't really wanted to die as much as everyone always seemed to think he did. He had just always wanted completion; absolution, but he was afraid of exactly that. It was depressing to crave what you were afraid of. To crave what you knew you weren't allowed to crave for. Everyone had always assumed that he desired death and that that was why he was always firm with the belief that 'Whatever happens: happens', when in all actuality, he felt guilty because he wanted the opposite. He wanted to live, and he wanted to get away from his past.. All of it.

But he knew quite well that he wasn't allowed. He was to complete the path he had chosen so many years ago.. He had to make things right in his past, before he could continue in the present.

Turning his gaze from his lifeless body back to the twenty or so men who had gawked as he made his short decline from Vicious' body, he was slightly surprised to see two additions to the crowd.

Faye was hunched over, sobbing into her hands as she slowly slid down the wall as Jet softly supported her, staring at his body in an odd mix of disbelief (maybe crushed hope that he would live?) and remorse. Giving his attention fully to Faye, Spike - knowing that his eyes flooded with just a bit more regret - almost tried to shield it once again, just like he had hours before in front of her but then stopped himself.

He was dead.

He wasn't going to censor himself anymore when it came to what he felt or thought about. He was dead. He had paid the price for being allowed to be his true self in front of Faye.

Walking over to her slowly, he heard the sounds of his footsteps and the crunching glass and stone that accompanied them, but noticed that no one else took heed. Apparently his assumptions were correct; he was just another friendly little ghost that no one could see or hear. _Heh_, he self mocked in his head. _Just call me a modern-day Casper.._

Crouching down before her, he gently placed his hands on the crown of her head, and slowly let his fingers thread through the violet locks as he ran one of his hands down to cup her tear-soaked cheek. She stopped shaking and froze for a few seconds, and for a brief flash, he was afraid that maybe he wasn't so 'ghost-y' after-all.

Could she feel him? What did he feel like? Stereotypical coldness or wind, or maybe what he wanted the most of all: a soft burning warmth. Comforting warmth. He didn't want her to feel a coldness from him like she always had before; he wanted her to get comfort from him. He felt himself slowly warm and arched an eyebrow at the idea that he could control it, but shoved those thoughts away. He had an eternity to think about all of those things, for now he was going to think about someone whom he wasn't quite sure he would have that long with.

Threading his fingers through her hair again, he lightly ran his thumb over her cheekbone when she raised her head and stared straight through him towards his prone body; he took the chance to gaze at her red puffy face and watery green eyes.

She always did have beautiful eyes.

He knew that she couldn't hear him, couldn't see him, but he shushed her softly anyway and gazed into her eyes with reassurance even though she wasn't looking back. Everyone had always assumed that Julia and how things turned out with her was his biggest regret. In reality, it was almost true - just not so much for the reasons they all thought. He had never shut the door on Julia. He was still tied to her; they weren't finished.

At least, not until today.

Julia was beautiful. She was beautiful inside, too, but he would admit that it was only in spurts. Sometimes, she would be the cruelest person he knew, especially when she was on a mission for the syndicate. He had always just thought that everyone had an evil side, she was just honest enough for a woman to admit that she did too - and she didn't try to hide it. He had grown up in the syndicate, there weren't too many people that he met long term (or even long enough to claim to know them) that didn't have an evil half. She had fun killing people sometimes. She enjoyed confusion, pain, and misguidance; she thought it was amusing. She was vengeful. Yet there were moments when she looked like a lost, scared little girl who couldn't believe the horrible world in which she lived in. He fell in love with that Julia. Whether it was out of protection for the scared little Julia inside of her, or pity for the way Evil Dangerous Julia would attempt to hide Scared Little Julia, he would never know. He just did.

But then he got out.

Faye was strange enough. At first he disliked her. She was nothing like a woman, she was just a spiteful little girl playing grown-up games and needed a babysitter more than that bounty on her head. Which would make enough sense, he supposed. After all, her story was true. She technically was just a little girl playing grown-up games, but it wasn't for the reason he had first assumed. One minute she had her family, her parents, her high school friends, and maybe an immature boyfriend, too, and the next she woke up fifty-seven years in the future.. Alone, no memory, and a mountain of debt that was illegally placed upon her shoulders. He would jump into grown-up games too, if he were her. She never had that slow growth of childhood happiness into adult reality. She was thrown into the freezing lake straight out of a burning hot tub.

He wondered what it was like for her. What her past was, how it came to be that she had to be frozen...

He wished he had stopped to ask her before he left her crying in the hallway.

Letting his eyes re-focus on hers, he smiled softly at her again. He kissed her forehead and continued to slowly run his fingers through her silky hair as he felt her unconsciously lean into his ghosting touch. Closing his eyes, he sat next to her and resumed his contemplations.

Yes, Faye was strange to him, but he slowly began to understand her - after he had accepted her, at least. People always thought he was in denial, or stupid, blind, or just didn't care when it came to the truth about Julia. People are oftentimes wrong. He knew she never really loved him fully. He supposed that if she loved anything about him, it was the way he loved her, or what he represented for her. He was in love with the scared little Julia within her that needed protecting, while Vicious loved the evil dangerous Julia. He was sorry to say that he knew the scales came in at 80% vs. 20%, Evil Dangerous Julia as the dominant side. Vicious had eighty-percent of Julia, while Spike had only the twenty-percent of purity within her. Vicious never really took the time to realize that though. It was odd.. Spike knew he was never an innocent. He had done horrible things, and it wasn't always just because the syndicate said so. Maybe that's why being with Julia hadn't burned him; the evil side of her offset the little purity within her so it wasn't at a scalding degree against his own tainted skin.

Maybe that was why he had been afraid to really touch Faye before now; before he was dead. She would have burned hum for sure. He saw past her slutty clothes and devil-may-care attitude a long time ago. She was pure; a scared little girl in grown-up clothes and grown-up skin with a grown-up attitude because she didn't know how else to be. Sure her temper was real, but that was a good thing about her. Purity with a backbone. Purity with a little bit of ego.

He knew how she felt about him. How she loved him even though they never said anything about it. Sometimes he could see it in her eyes when she gazed at him, regardless of how hard he could see her attempting to hide it. He never let her know he could. Sometimes it was in the way she took care of him when he was injured, with her little hands wrapping gauze around his wounds to the point where he was practically a mummy on the couch, or the way she would kiss his forehead when she thought he was passed out from pain. In reality, he was just absorbing it wholly, so that it wasn't tainted like it would be if he opened his eyes and she reverted back into the spitfire hellion. But mostly when she cried for him, he could hear it, see it, smell it, and even feel it burn a little. He didn't deserve it, but it was there, and it was powerful. He would always try to keep her away; taunting and fighting and mocking and splintered tongues which always ended up as mud-covered flirting... a bit of the opposite to sugar coated aspirin. Sugar is always used to coat bitterness.. remember that always. But he and Faye.. They had always slung mud to hide the sweetness that secreted from their mouths towards the other. Mud covered love. He knew that's how she viewed it as, also.

She just never knew that it was returned.

But Julia.. It wasn't that he was in denial of the true facts about Julia. It wasn't that he was in denial about his repressed love for Faye, either, like he knew Jet assumed he was. He knew that Jet knew that there was something there between he and Faye. He suspected that Edward knew, too. Actually, he suspected that the only one who didn't know was Faye herself, but he figured that that was just because she wouldn't let herself get her hopes up.. so she found a way to live on the ground - live on the ground without wings, so it would be bearable.

He didn't know if he was proud of her or not for that. He wanted her to fly, but he knew he couldn't allow himself to hold her hand and teach her how. Also, that way it wouldn't hurt so bad when she fell and he wouldn't be there to catch her like she so desperately wanted him to. Like how she unknowingly begged him with her eyes to.

He didn't want her to crash to the ground, but he also knew that one couldn't thrive on the ground.

It was too late now, anyway.

He wasn't in denial, and he wasn't under the delusion that he and Julia were meant for forever. Before he got the message from Julia to meet her, even, he knew that. He just felt guilty. He shouldn't be allowed to move on with his present and future, when he hadn't closed the book on his past. Vicious wanted him dead.. Faye would have just been killed eventually, if he had let her in on the secret that everyone in the world knew but her. They had already attacked the Bebop once, to try to kill him. If he had gone back before he killed Vicious, it would have just happened again. He knew that, and he knew that Jet knew that, but again, Faye didn't see it.

He would have told her there, in that hallway as she cried for him not to leave and begged to know why he refused to stay, but knowing her - she would have claimed that they could outrun Vicious and that they would be fine. Right.. Sometimes he forgot that she was cryogenically frozen, and thus went to sleep in 2014 and woke up in 2071, so he would forget that she would never really have a full grasp on how the 'future' worked or just how dangerous the syndicates were. She knew almost nothing about them except that he used to be in one, and that they were dangerous and evil, but he knew every second and square inch of them. After all, he was once second in command to the Red Dragon Syndicate before he escaped. He had to remind himself sometimes of those little differences between them, and that she would never know the danger of the syndicates unless she were directly affiliated within them, so she wouldn't understand. He had to be patient with her and protect her. He also knew she wouldn't appreciate being told that, so he didn't start the argument at all, and just didn't tell her that there was no out-running a syndicate. Either you kill them, or they killed you.

If he wanted to return to the Bebop, return to Faye and let her in on the big-bad-secret... he had to kill Vicious. Only then would she be safe. Annie said that Vicious killed the elders, which meant that if he killed Vicious, he would be the leader of the Red Dragons.. Perhaps he could pass the leadership onto Shin, and Shin could finally fix the corrupted blackness that became the syndicate. Before it was just illegal and bad, now though, with Vicious ruling.. it was monstrous and evil.

* * *

He met Julia in that graveyard like she had asked him to and even as he walked in, the pieces he had uncovered fit perfectly into the puzzle and he was standing before a completed jigsaw. The jigsaw didn't know that, though, and begged to run away just like he had begged her, five years before. He wasn't quite sure what to say, really. She didn't quite affect him anymore. Not since Faye. Not since he escaped and let himself admit the way things were. So instead, he said nothing at all.

She told him that he wouldn't need all the weapons, if they were just going to escape... it almost made him a little angry towards her, but then he chided himself. She didn't know about Jet, Edward, the Bebop or.. or Faye. She probably just assumed he was pining away in misery at the bottom of a bottle at the lack of her love for him, and was jumping at the chance to finally have her all to himself. Or, technically, all to himself since Vicious was trying to kill her and no longer wanted her. That made him a little mad as well, about how she would assume things like that, but again, he didn't say anything. At least, not until she claimed to be staying with him through the fight. He had just assumed she would run away again and hide in case he didn't manage to kill Vicious and she continued to be hunted.

That was another way that she and Faye were different. Julia would fight with him, but Faye wouldn't let him fight at all. Faye wouldn't die next to him; she would just not allow him to risk his life in the first place.

She would cry in hallways and beg him not to go. Not to risk it. But he knew. He knew that if it were unavoidable, Faye would die alongside him. Didn't she just prove that earlier? The left thrusters on her ship were busted, yet she still left the hanger and flew out after him into the throng of syndicate ships and shot down as many as she could to protect him and the Bebop, whether or not it meant her death in a faulty ship that hadn't been fixed yet.

He broke out of his thoughtful contemplation and finished loading the shotgun, before moving past Julia to the window. He didn't quite know how to reply to her staying with him; so he instead asked forgiveness from Annie for beginning to cause a scene. Julia could stay for the fight if she wished, but he would have to let her know that he wouldn't be running off with her no matter what the outcome. He would protect her; her and that scared little Julia inside of her, but then he wondered if she still existed. No matter if she did or not, he would die for her if need be because it would be the right thing to do, and he would work his way back to the Bebop to say goodbye.. just in case.. and then go after Vicious. It needed to end. As pretty and dramatic as the last page was in the book of his past, he needed to shut the back cover, and place it upon his bookshelf before he could pull out his present.

* * *

So he did. Julia was shot down on the rooftops just minutes later and he felt regret for it, and he was angry at the syndicate men for shooting her. He got angry for that little twenty-percent purity within her that cried for freedom. He held the twenty-percent purity as she died, and then he left. Before he had woken Jet up for their last 'chat' before he left, he had written a letter to Faye which explained everything to her. The past, the present he so desperately wanted but wasn't allowed quite yet, and he told her that he knew about their unacknowledged love. He told her about how it was mud-covered words for the both of them, and not just her. He let her know that he did, in fact, love her, and that she wasn't alone like he knew she always imagined herself to be. He let her know that if anything went wrong with Vicious and he didn't make it.. that he would wait for her, but only if she waited to come herself. He knew how she could be. Strong shell, yet brittle and easy to crack; much like an egg. She was dramatic and fiery and always did everything over the top. He knew she hated feeling lost, and he also knew that he, along with the rest of the Bebop was much like her rock. Ed and Ein had already left. If he left, too, he wasn't quite sure what she would do, but he had to cover all bases, just to be sure. Of course, even if she didn't listen to him, he would still be waiting for her. He would be there.

He hadn't planned on dying, not when he had the Bebop and the rag-tag crew that were his family to live for, but he knew that they didn't always get what they wanted.

He had placed the letter beneath his pillow, so that in case he did make it back, they would never know of it and he could tell her all those things himself. They would only find it if he didn't come home.

Opening his eyes and turning back to the sight of his body and Jet slowly closing the unseeing eyes, he frowned. It looked like he wouldn't be coming home after all.

With one last run through her hair with his fingers, he kissed her forehead one last time and whispered that he loved her in her ear, then let himself go. He would watch over her for forever if need be, and he would always be there for her and wait for her when her time came.

She would know what he wished he could have told her sooner.


	2. 2004 Original Version

The original, from 2004... Eep.

He looked down on the body of himself; lying prone on the red staircase with a sense of calm and regret. He hadn't really wanted to die, as much as everyone always seemed to think he did. He had just always wanted completion; absolution, but he was afraid of exactly that. It was depressing to crave what you were afraid of. To crave what you knew you weren't allowed to crave for. Everyone had always assumed that he craved death and that that was why he was always firm with the belief that 'Whatever happens: happens', when in all actuality, he felt guilty because he wanted the opposite. He wanted to live, and he wanted to get away from his past.. All of it.

But he knew quite well that he wasn't allowed. He was to complete the path he had chosen so many years ago.. He had to make things right in his past, before he could continue in the present.

Turning his gaze back up to the twenty or so men who had gawked as he made his short decline from Vicious' body, he was slightly surprised to see a couple extra people there as well.

Faye was hunched over, sobbing into her hands as she slowly slid down the wall as Jet softly supported her, staring at his body in an odd mix of disbelief (or maybe crushed hope that he would live?) and remorse. Turning his gaze back fully to Faye, Spike - knowing that his eyes flooded with just a bit more regret - almost tried to shield it once again; just like he had hours before in front of her, but then stopped himself.

He was dead.

He wasn't going to censor himself anymore when it came to what he felt or thought about. He was dead. He had paid the price for being allowed to do so.

Walking over to her slowly, he heard the sounds of his footsteps and the crunching glass and rock that accompanied them, and noticed that no one else took heed. Apparently his assumptions were correct; he was just another friendly little ghost that no one could see or hear. _Heh_, he self mocked in his head. _Just call me a modern-day Casper.._

Crouching down before her, he gently placed his hands on the crown of her head, and slowly let his fingers thread through the violet locks as he ran his hand down to cup under her chin. She stopped shaking and froze for a few seconds, and for a brief flash, he was afraid that maybe he wasn't so 'ghost-y' after-all. Could she feel him? What did he feel like? Stereotypical coldness or wind, or maybe what he wanted the most of all: a soft burning warmth. Comforting warmth. He didn't want her to feel a coldness from him like she had ever before; he wanted her to get comfort from him. He felt himself slowly warm, and arched an eyebrow at the idea that he could control it, but shoved those thoughts away. He had an eternity to think about all of those things; for now he was going to think about someone whom he wasn't quite sure he would have that long with.

Threading his fingers through her hair again, and lightly running his thumb over her cheekbone when she looked up, and stared straight through him, at what he assumed to be his body, he took a glance at her red puffy face and watery green eyes.

She always did have beautiful eyes.

He knew that she couldn't hear him, and couldn't see him, but he shushed her softly anyway and gazed into her eyes with reassurance even though she wasn't looking back. Everyone had always assumed that Julia and how things turned out with her, was his biggest regret; in reality it was almost true. Just not so much for the reasons they all thought. He had never shut the door on Julia. He was still tied to her; they weren't finished.

At least, not until today.

Julia was beautiful. She was beautiful inside, too, but he would admit that it was only in spurts. Sometimes, she would be the cruellest person he knew; when she got into a mission for the syndicate. He had always just thought that everyone had an evil side; she was just honest enough for a woman to admit that she did too, and she didn't try to hide it. He had grown up in the syndicate; there weren't too many people that he met long term, or even good enough to claim to know them, that didn't have an evil half. She had fun, killing people sometimes. She enjoyed confusion, pain, and misguidance; she thought it was amusing. She was revengeful. Yet there were moments when she looked like a lost, scared little girl who couldn't believe the horrible world in which she lived in. He fell in love with that Julia. Whether it was out of protection for the scared little Julia inside of her, or pity for the way Evil Dangerous Julia would attempt to hide Scared Little Julia, he would never know. He just did.

But then he got out.

Faye was strange enough. At first he disliked her. She was nothing like a woman, she was just a spiteful little girl playing grown-up games and needed a babysitter more than that bounty on her head. Which would make enough sense, he supposed. After all, her story was true. She technically was just a little girl playing grown-up games, but it wasn't for the reason he had first assumed. One minute she had her family, her parents, her high school friends, and maybe an immature boyfriend, too, and the next she woke up fifty-seven years into the future, alone, no memory, and a mountain of debt that was illegally placed upon her shoulders. He would jump into grown-up games too, if he were she. She never had that slow growth of child happiness into adult reality. She was thrown into the freezing lake straight out of a burning hot tub.

He wondered what it was like for her. What her past was, how it came to be that she had to be frozen...

He wished he had stopped to ask her before he left her crying in the hall.

Letting his eyes re-focus on hers, and not through her, he smiled a little again at her, softly. He kissed her forehead, and continued to slowly run his fingers through her silky hair, and closed his eyes as he kneeled next to her and resumed his contemplations.

Faye was strange to him, but he slowly began to understand her. After he had accepted her, at least. People always thought he was in denial, or stupid, blind, or just didn't care when it came to the truth about Julia. People were oftentimes wrong. He knew she never really loved him all the way. He supposed that if she loved anything about him, it was the way he loved her, or what he represented for her. He was in love with the scared little Julia within her that needed protecting, while Vicious loved the evil dangerous Julia. He was sorry to say that he knew the tides came in at 80% vs. 20%, Evil Dangerous Julia as the dominant side. Vicious had eighty-percent of Julia, while Spike had only the twenty-percent of purity within her. Vicious never really took the time to realize that though. It was odd.. Spike knew he was never an innocent. He had done horrible things, and it wasn't always just because the syndicate said so. Maybe that's why being with Julia hadn't burned him; the evil side of her offset the little purity within her so it wasn't at a scalding degree against his own tainted skin.

Maybe that was why he had been afraid to touch Faye before now. Before he was dead. She would have burned for sure. He saw past her sluttish clothes and Devil-May-Care attitude a long time ago. She was a pure, scared little girl in grown-up clothes and grown-up skin with a grown-up attitude because she didn't know how else to be. Sure her temper was real, but that was a good thing about her. Purity with a backbone. Purity with a little bit of ego.

He knew how she felt about him. How she loved him even though they never said anything about it. Sometimes he could see it in her eyes when she gazed at him regardless of how hard he could see her attempting to hide it, and he never let her know he could, in fact, do just that. Sometimes it was in the way she took care of him when he was injured, with her little hands wrapping gauze around his wounds and the way she would kiss his forehead when she thought he was passed out from pain, when in reality he was just absorbing it wholly, so that it wasn't tainted like it would be if he opened his eyes and she reverted back into the spitfire hellion. But mostly when she cried for him, he could hear it, see it, smell it, and even feel it burn a little. He didn't deserve it, but it was there, and it was powerful. He would always try to keep her away; taunting and fighting and mocking and splintered tongues which always ended up as mud-covered flirting... a bit of the opposite to sugar coated Advil. Sugar is always used to coat bitterness.. remember that always. But he and Faye.. They had always slung mud to hide their own sweetness that secreted from their mouths towards the other. Mud covered love. He knew that's how she viewed it as, too.

She just never knew that it was returned.

It wasn't that he was in denial of the facts about Julia. It wasn't that he was in denial about his mud covered love for Faye, either, like he knew Jet just assumed he was. He knew that Jet knew that there was something there between him and Faye. He suspected that Edward knew, too. Actually, he suspected that the only one who didn't know was Faye herself, but he figured that that was just because she wouldn't let herself get her hopes up, so she found a way to live on the ground - live on the ground without wings, so it would be bearable.

He didn't know if he was proud of her or not for that. He wanted her to fly, but he knew he couldn't allow himself to hold her hand and teach her how. Also, this way it wouldn't hurt so bad when she fell and he wouldn't be there to catch her like she so desperately wanted him to. Like how she unknowingly begged him with her eyes to.

He didn't want her to crash to the ground, but he also knew that one couldn't thrive on the ground.

It was too late now, anyway.

He wasn't in denial, and he wasn't under the delusion that he and Julia were meant for forever. Before he got the message from Julia to meet her, even, he knew that. He just felt guilty. He shouldn't be allowed to move on with his present and future, when he hadn't closed the book on his past. Vicious wanted him dead.. Faye would have just been killed eventually, if he had let her in on the secret that everyone in the world knew but her. They had already attacked the Bebop once, to try to kill him. If he had gone back before he killed Vicious, it would have just happened again. He knew that, and he knew that Jet knew that, but again, Faye didn't see it. He would have told her, there, in that hallway as she cried for him not to leave and begged to know why he was, but she would have claimed that they could outrun him and they would be fine. Sometimes he forgot that she was cryogenically frozen, and thus went to sleep in 2014 and woke up in 2071, so he would forget that she would never really have a full grasp on how the 'future' worked or just how dangerous the syndicates were. She knew almost nothing about them except that he used to be in one, and that they were dangerous and evil, but he knew every second and centimetre of them. After all, he once was second in command to the Red Dragon Syndicate before he escaped. He had to remind himself sometimes of those little differences between them, and that she would never know the danger of the syndicates unless she were directly affiliated within them, so she wouldn't understand. He also knew she wouldn't appreciate being told that, so he didn't start the argument at all, and just didn't tell her that there was no out-running a syndicate. Either you kill them, or they killed you.

So if he wanted to return to the Bebop, and return to Faye, and let her in on the big-bad-secret... he had to kill Vicious. Only then would she be safe. Annie said that Vicious killed the elders, which meant that if he killed Vicious, he would be the leader of the Red Dragons.. Perhaps he could pass the leadership onto Shin, and Shin could finally fix the corrupted blackness that became the syndicate. Before it was just illegal and bad, now though, with Vicious ruling.. it was monstrous and evil.

He met Julia in that graveyard like she had asked him to and even as he walked in, the puzzle pieces he had discovered fit perfectly into the puzzle and he was standing before a completed jigsaw. The jigsaw didn't know that, though, and begged to run away just like he had begged her, five years before. He wasn't quite sure what to say, really. She didn't quite effect him anymore. Not since Faye. Not since he escaped and let himself admit the way things were. So instead, he said nothing at all.

She told me that I wouldn't need all the weapons, if we were going to escape... it almost made me a little angry towards her, but then I chided myself. She didn't know about Jet, Edward, the Bebop or.. or Faye. She probably just assumed he was pining away in misery at the bottom of a bottle at the lack of her love for him, and was jumping at the chance to finally have her all to himself. Or, technically, all to himself since Vicious was trying to kill her and no longer wanted her. That made him a little mad, about how she would assume things like that, but again, he didn't say anything. At least, not until she claimed to be staying with him, through the fight. He had just assumed she would run away again and hide away if he didn't manage to kill Vicious and continued to be hunted.

That was another way that she and Faye were different. Julia would fight with him, but Faye wouldn't let him fight at all. Faye wouldn't die next to him; she would just not allow him to risk his life in the first place. She would cry in hallways and beg him not to go. Not to risk it. But he knew. He knew that if it were unavoidable, Faye would die alongside him. Didn't she just prove that earlier? The left thrusters on her ship were busted, yet she still left the hanger and flew out after him in the throng of the syndicate ships and shot down as many as she could to protect him and the Bebop, whether or not it meant her death in a faulty ship that hadn't been fixed yet.

He broke out of his thoughtful contemplation before Julia and finished loading the shotgun, before moving past Julia to the window. He didn't quite know how to reply to her staying with him; so he instead asked forgiveness from Annie for beginning to cause a scene. Julia could stay for the fight if she wished, but he would have to let her know that he wouldn't be running off with her no matter what the outcome. He would protect her; her and that scared little Julia inside of her, but then he wondered if she still existed. No matter if she did or not, he would die for her if need be because it would be the right thing to do, and he would work his way back to the Bebop to say goodbye.. just in case.. and then go after Vicious. It needed to end. As pretty and dramatic as the last page was in the book of his past, he needed to shut the back cover, and place it upon his bookshelf before he could pull out his present. So he did. Julia was shot down on the rooftops just minutes later and he felt regret for it, and he was angry at the syndicate men for shooting her. He got angry for the little twenty-percent purity within her that cried for freedom. He held the twenty-percent purity as she died, and then he left. Before he had woken Jet up for their last 'chat' before he left, he had written a letter to Faye which explained everything to her. The past, the present he so desperately wanted but wasn't allowed quite yet, and he told her that he knew about their mud covered love. He told her about how it was mud covered love for the both of them, and not just her. He let her know that he did, in fact, love her, and that she wasn't alone like he knew she always imagined herself to be. He let her know that if anything went wrong with Vicious and he didn't make it.. that he would wait for her, but only if she waited to come herself. He knew how she could be. Strong shell, yet brittle and easy to crack; much like an egg. She was dramatic and fiery and always did everything over the top. He knew she hated feeling lost, and he also knew that he, along with the rest of the Bebop was much like her rock. Ed and Ein had already left. If he left, too, he wasn't quite sure what she would do, but he had to cover all bases, just to be sure. Of course, even if she didn't listen to him, he would still be waiting for her. He would be there. He didn't plan on dying, not when he had the Bebop and the rag-tag crew that were his family to live for, but he knew that they didn't always get what they wanted.

He had placed the letter beneath his pillow, so that in case he did make it back, they would never know of the letter, and he could tell her all those things himself. They would only find it if he didn't come home.

Opening his eyes and turning back to the sight of his body and Jet slowly closing the unseeing eyes, he frowned. It looked like he wouldn't be coming home after all.

With one last run through her hair with his fingers, he kissed her forehead once again and whispered that he loved her in her ear, and then let himself go. He would watch over her for forever if need be, and he would always be there for her and wait for her when her time came.

She would know.


End file.
